Swedish furniture retailer IKEA plans to team up with a third party e-commerce site starting in 2018, aiming to increase sales in the Chinese market.

 

IKEA has opened up online retailing in over 10 other countries, and has been testing it out in China since September last year in Shanghai, with 9,500 products available on the its own website. Shipments of small items are handled by Amazon Logistics and large furnishing products by a local logistics company. The website crashed on the first day as registration requests flooded the system.

 

The furniture retailer previously had talks with Tmall, one of China's biggest online retailers operated by Alibaba group, but no official deals have been reached thus far. Whether or not will IKEA open up full-scale shipment in China this time is yet to be seen.

 

With only 22 stores in China, IKEA finds it hard to keep up with consumer needs. But that is not the only reason for it to turn to e-commerce in China.

 

“Chinese market has its own local characteristics, and IKEA has witnessed the changes of Chinese consumers over the years," Wang Jianguo, analyst in furniture retailing, told Chinese media outlet Sina. "Chinese youngsters born after 1985 and 1990 are becoming the core demographic group in the market, and they prefer shopping online."